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Topic: My first cam this season - "Mangobert" (Read 839 times)

I got this season's bloomies off to what I hope will be a good start with an homage to our newest herd member, her name is Mango (Spitfire's Mango Tango to be exact. She is a registered grade, 25% Nubian/75% LaMancha, in her first freshening. Up to now we've been keeping only Nigerian Dwarfs, so I'm interested to see how the milk from this full sized goat will differ. I used Mango's milk exclusively in this make.

The third cheese is a little disk of lightly pressed chèvre I put into the ripening box with them yesterday. The last picture shows a smidge of the dreaded mucor on the side of one wheel. They look as if they're about to bloom. I dabbed the one grey spot with 20% brine until no longer visible then I sanitized the ripening box and mat. I hope that was the right thing to do. Crossing my fingers and watching...

Well, I tried to fend off the poil de chat by dabbing and washing with salted vinegar and removing with a tooth pick to no avail. The geo and PC never got started. With two days inattention the fur took over. So last night I removed all the fuzz and grey and about 1/4 inch of the surface. Pictures below.

The resulting cheese looked adequate enough to consume with some sliced sourdough baguette. It was OK, but nothing exciting. Lactic acidity was noticeable, rather sharp for a young cheese, a hair salty (pardon the pun). It was good enough that I polished it off myself in one sitting with an India Pale Ale. (At the onset it didn't seem wine-worthy). The other wheel and the pressed chèvre are still fuzz covered and sitting in the box in the fridge. I'll deal with those shortly. Since I was able to eat the cheese I won't consider it a total abject failure.

I'll look over this make to see where it could be improved, determined to give it another go. Meanwhile I'm sterilizing everything before heading into another cheesemaking session. Perhaps too, my mold powders are shot. I haven't gotten a successful bloom on any of my semi-lactics so far this year. They were stored in a ziplock bag in the coldest part of the fridge with my cultures and rennet through the winter.

I'm curious too about how Mango's milk compares but I think she's from the two fullsize breeds that have milk most like ND so maybe it won't be much different.

I'm a bit surprised at the holes in your paste. Any idea what those are from? Almost looks like yeast contamination but I don't know enough about it....... Was your stomach okay after eating? Glad it tasted good enough to eat. Not a failure at all when that happen!

This really was more of a semi lactic than a cam given the 12 hr. culturing/renneting time. It's not uncommon for me to get a springy curd set when I make a cheese like this but this case was rather extreme. I suspect you're right, must have been some sort of yeast contamination. As much as I'm making kefir in the same kitchen. I don't really think that would be part of the culprit.

My tummy was happy after I ate that cheese. I trimmed the other one the same way and broiled it on top of a frittata a few days ago and that was even better, but again nothing great.

Yes, Mango's milk is quite similar to the Nigerians'. I've tried the purebred LaMancha milk from that herd too and it's not noticeably different than Mango's. The ND milk does taste ever so slightly sweeter to me than hers, but unless you're drinking them side by side in a taste test the difference isn't really noticeable. Yeild is just a bit higher with the ND milk so I suspect higher milk solids than the milk from this grade. Butterfat seems surprisingly close to the ND milk too, but I'm just going off mouthfeel and the degree of cream separation. The ND milk takes a slight victory there too though.

Quantity is the biggest difference. Mango milk about 3 quarts per day as a first freshener. My best milking ND gives just shy of 2 quarts. Two and a half pints is what the rest of the herd averages, but our milking schedule is a bit more variant than I'd like it to be. I gauge she eats close to 3x as much as the other goats though. must admit that she's much easier to milk than many of the Nigerians.

We were aiming to do the one day milk test at the NEODGA show last weekend in Wooster with 4 of the 5 does we had in milk, but we had other things come up including our last freshening this season. Would have been nice to have the official results (and the milk stars), but we might be able to catch one more test on the circuit before next year. I'll certainly post on the forum if we do.

Hmmm, I'm surprised about the lower milk solids. I thought LaMancha and Nubian were both very high solid milk producing, as high as ND. I guess I was just assuming that "high" meant as high as ND, not going on any data.

I am thinking of moving towards having a Kinder goat herd. They are a hybrid breed out of Nubian and Pygmy goats that are good for milk and meat. I love goat meat and love goat milk and having a better dual purpose could be nice. I would like the same amount of milk from 2 or 3 animals as I'm getting from 5-6 ND goats. Less to get on and off the stand, less kids to disbud and find homes for (I don't show and don't have a name in the goat world so it's harder to sell on the glutted market), less hooves to trim, etc. That said, it's a new breed and an intentionally landrace type of breed so there's a lot of variation with some animals more towards the meat end of the spectrum and some nearer the dairy end of the spectrum. I've seen some that produce 3 quarts a day and aren't much bigger than my ND and many of their bodies are quite similar to my ND girls. To be able to have a wether that can be butchered without feeding him hay all winter is a nice goal. I like to go into winter with as few animals as possible.

The first Kinders I saw photos of were so ugly I thought I'd never be able to handle having any but some breeders are producing nicely balanced animals. My other choice I guess would be mini-Nubian but the meat goal wouldn't be met as well and some mini-Nubians I've seen don't look that much smaller than purebred Nubians. A local friend from this forum and I live close enough to share bucks and we're both heading towards Kinder herds.

We're a tall family too. That means more stooping and hunching over in handling little goats.

There are pros and cons to keeping NDs. On the plus side the milk is the best tasting of the goat breeds, if you like it sweet and rich. And you can get more than a third of the milk for less than a quarter of the feed, with the right management.

We'll probably breed Mango to a LaMancha buck this year so we can register her kids. Depending on what she throws we're considering using an ND buck with her next year. The offspring would be 'mini grades' but I'm curious to see what we'd get. It'd be more than two years out to see how they milk, but it could be an interesting project.

BTW, we also keep Pygoras for fiber. They're an Angora/Pygmy cross. Save a few goats we like the ND personalities better. We have eaten a few Pygoras that weren't coming up to standard. They dressed out OK. Nothing like a Boer or a Kiko though. I haven't heard of crossing Boers to dairy goats, but I'd guess someone has done it. We've been looking at crossing Angoras and/or Pygoras with NDs for a tri-purpose goat (meat, milk, and fiber). That, of course, would be an even longer term project.

Ahhh, we're tall too. I do almost all the goat stuff (since Joseph doesn't do much dairy in his diet) and I'm about 5'10". He's around 6'4" so it's a good thing we have a tall milking stand.

I like your idea of a triple purpose goat! Do keep me posted if you ever head in that direction.

I milk just once a day and am getting a quart plus from my third freshener and my first freshener was giving a quart but is dropping down now to 1 1/2 pints. I'm getting a half gallon between the two. I'd really like to be getting a 1/2-3/4 gallon from each goat with once a day milking. I'm hoping Kinders will offer me that if I stick to very nice breeding lines. I'm planning on kids from Sue Beck. Her site is https://sites.google.com/site/prickerpatch/home She's had an appraisal done and is very together about assessing her breeding results. There are a lot of haphazard crossed Kinders that look like they were designed by a committee if you know what I mean.....no flow, no grace and pitifully ugly. Check out Sue's doe and buck pages.